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| http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10702389-obamas-image-on-american-flag-angers-vets |
The main problem, however, is the fact that they put Obama's face on the American flag. It was completely unnecessary to do so, and it can actually do more harm than good (which is probably what happened in this case). After all, I doubt that many Americans would think highly of a person who put his or her face there. It is rude and disrespectful toward the country in many people's eyes for someone to do just this. Maybe I am being irrational with my thoughts, but if a candidate endorsed something like this (which I highly doubt was the case here) I would personally be less likely to vote for that candidate. To me, this screams "I think that I am more important that the country and its flag."
Perhaps foresight or a little common sense would have been the best thing for the people who produced and hung the flag. Really? They couldn't just put a poster in red, white and blue under the flag? The people who did this may have had good intentions, but they were being rather irresponsible and rash with the image of the person who they wanted to get elected as the president. I personally think that people will hear about this and think that the president endorsed such an action and will be less likely to vote for him as a result. Sadly, the members of the office who did this might not have helped the campaign with this as they probably wanted to, but they may have accidentally given the other party something to use against President Obama during the upcoming campaign-- as if he didn't have enough to deal with already.
One of the things I find most interesting about this is it brings up the issue of what the flag means. The flag, ultimately, is a complex rhetorical symbol. For some it means freedom, for some patriotism, for some the troops. For others in the world it might represent opportunity, or it might represent an evil empire.
ReplyDeleteObjects or words that are unusually rhetorically complex like this are sometimes called condensation symbols, in that they condense or accrue many, many meanings. So while the initial creator was perhaps thinking of a general sense of patriotism--or perhaps respect for the history-making nature of Obama's presidency--(perfectly valid in that limited sense), he/she was not taking into account ANY of the other possible associated meanings of the flag.
A similar debate came up in the 1990s when there was a political spat about whether people should be allowed to burn the flag. Was this free speech? Or was this something that was simply too fraught with associated meaning to be an allowable behavior. People tried to add a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, but the effort ultimately withered. Ultimately, I think that the Supreme Court decided that flag burning is protected as free speech. But it was definitely a complex, difficult decision.